O yeah its better performance. I wish I could convince my management to pony up the $ to get it.
One Collaborate 2009 session that continues to stick in my head showed benchmarks on the impact of using Oracle (or SQL Server) database compression.
The big points:
- Average disk space savings of 60%.
- Average DB Cache (SGA) savings also around 60% (memory savings)
- Inserts overhead ~= 1%
- Updates overhead ~= 2%
- Reads . . . 2.7 times faster . . . yes I said 2.7 times faster.
The catch is that you must have Enterprise edition of Oracle or SQL Server to use compression, and in Oracle's case compression is an extra cost option on top of that. On the other hand, 60% space savings and 2.7 times faster read I-O can put off some hardware upgrades for several years . . .
